He just wanted to come home

Nick Davis lived in the goldfish-bowl of the game at Collingwood Football Club but he couldn't tear his heart away from Sydney. Jessica Halloran explains how he found his way home.

You've got to understand how it was, Nick Davis said. How wanting to go home can be a football sin.

That walking down the street can be uncomfortable because everyone wants to know if you were really trying against Carlton in that last match. And why the hell would you want to leave the club?

That it's sometimes easier to pretend you're just "surfer or whatever" rather than a footballer when you go to the pub.

Because you don't always want to talk about footy, because there's more to life than just footy.

But that's not how it is in Melbourne. Footy is life. ");document.write("

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Davis is the son of former Collingwood and Carlton star Craig Davis, but is from the Sutherland shire, where rugby league was it, Andrew Ettingshausen was the only hero and Australian football? Well, the other kids at school just didn't want to play.

So, when Davis, a silky-skilled Sydney kid, born in 1980, arrived at Collingwood in 1999, things were, sometimes, overwhelming.

The black-and-white world can be suffocating. The attention is relentless. And when Davis decided he was keen to go home, the black-and-white army turned.

Davis is the first to say he was happy at the Magpies, the football club treated him well and he returned the faith with some dashing performances.

But he wasn't happy being away from home from the start.

In his second pre-season, after just the second day of training, he packed his bag, walked to a shopping centre, withdrew some cash and caught a taxi to the airport.

His mother, Judy, opened the door of her home that afternoon in Sydney to find Davis there.

"Nick, what are you doing here?" Judy asked bewildered.

"I've left," he said quietly. And then he broke down. Judy said it took her two weeks to "settle him down enough" for him to return to Victoria Park.

"It was very tough," she said. "I knew what he was going through. There was not a thing we could do about it. Nick keeps his feelings to himself. Over his time in Melbourne, he said to me only a couple of times, 'Mum I don't want to do this'."

Davis went back and played on. His two-year contract expired at the end of the 2000 season and Davis re-signed. Was that a good idea?

"Maybe through pressure ... he thought he was settling in a lot better, he signed on for another two years ... but it wasn't better," Judy said.

Still, his football shone.

In his third season with the club, in 2001, he slipped 36 goals through the white posts, 22 in the second half of the year, and showed game-breaking qualities.

His versatile, athletic game was admired and Collingwood knew the kid was good. Future star. Didn't want to lose this one.

"I thought he was settling down, he had outside interests, interests in racing horses," Judy said. "They do have a lot of free time out of training. I thought the outside interests were settling, but no."

His contract was up at the end of 2002 and his poor performances in the opening rounds of the season, most notably when the Pies were shamed by Carlton, had many questioning his commitment to the club.

Collingwood wanted a signature on a new contract. Right then. Davis, who was at the club under the father/son rule, pleaded for more time, until the end of the season.

Collingwood president Eddie McGuire said Collingwood players who were not "100 per cent committed" were not wanted at the club.

Davis believed back then that he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. He said he was sincerely committed to Collingwood.

"I had an interrupted start to the pre-season, I probably wasn't anywhere fit to play the first five rounds, the club didn't start off the way we wanted," Davis said. "I was just sitting there in the wrong spot at the wrong time. It was sort of pointed at me a little bit."

His season was hindered by osteitis pubis but Davis went on to play 20 games. He put in a brilliant performance against Adelaide in the preliminary final and was a member of the narrowly losing grand final team, beaten by Brisbane.

But by then, the homesickness plagued him. He wanted out, he wanted to go home.

"If he was never going to be happy, there was no point in it," Judy said. "It doesn't matter how much money you are making, there's no point."

Davis said: "It was a tough time but I knew what I wanted. My manager knew what he had to do to try and make the deal to come back to here."

Davis told the club he wanted to be traded to Sydney. The club told him not to attend their prestigious presentation evening. "We've advised him not to go to the Copeland Trophy because he doesn't want to play for us," Collingwood football manager Neil Balme said.

"How many times can you welcome someone when he doesn't want to be there?"

Davis said the club was protecting him. "That maybe the fans would take it the wrong way, they might have done a few things ..." he said slowly but strongly.

Then his wish came true. He was wrestled with, then shunted off to Sydney in the dying seconds of the October trading period.

Collingwood coach Mick Malthouse's words were frank. "We are disappointed that Nick Davis is gone," he said. "But as we have said before, that we only want good people at this football club."

Davis remains optimistic about the coach he respects, despite the words.

"I think the fact they wanted me to stay makes me feel that those things that are said aren't really meant in the way they come out," he said. "If they didn't think I was a good person, they would have kicked me out. They were keen for me to stay but I was pretty keen to come back here."

Judy said the club, Malthouse and Balme, especially, had treated Davis extremely well.

"I can't speak highly enough of the staff down there," she said. "I think they what they [Balme and Malthouse] said in the heat of the moment ... they were still hurt he wanted to leave after what they had done for him."

The forward said he has pushed that time out of his head now and had left that "full-on" football life behind.

"I'd had enough of the football scene, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, that you get," he said. "You can hide from a few things up here but in Melbourne you're in the public light. If you have a bad game you've got to carry it around the streets."

"[In Sydney] your only footy time is when you come to the club. When you go home you don't have to have anything to do with footy, you can relax a lot more.

"I think it would have been a lot tougher moving to a Melbourne club... After two weeks it was forgotten, I moved away from it all."

But Davis couldn't escape his injury. The osteitis pubis that had hindered him throughout 2001 was restricting him to just one training session a week and had to be treated.

Soon after arriving in Sydney, he had an adductor release and a hernia operation.

"It's been up to three months since the operation now and he's been on a fairly controlled rehab program," Swans doctor Nathan Gibbs said. "He'll still be in rehab another three to four weeks then he'll be back into full team training. That would be the best result, perfect if that happens."

Davis hopes to be fit for a pre-season match or the first round match against Carlton at the Telstra Stadium at the latest. Nearly fully fit and firing - he hopes. He likes to play up forward, has a strong mark, sublime kicking skills and has been known to bag five goals in a quarter.

Coach Paul Roos said: "We need guys to kick goals."

The Swans know what Davis can become. "We do think he's going to be a good player," Roos said. "Perhaps he'll play a couple of games for the seconds team. He's here for a long time, he'll be here for eight to 10 years. We want him to be fit."

Roos said it was "unique" having a player wanting to come back to Sydney - they usually wanted to go back to Melbourne.

Davis had two reasons for wanting to return. "Home, it was the main reason I wanted to come to Sydney, and also that obviously Sydney are going to be successful over the next couple of years," he said.

"I see Sydney in the same position as Collingwood were last year - a lot of inner belief in the way that we can play, and the outside people not knowing a lot about Sydney this year ... I think it's going to be exciting."